


Riddles

by kimtristh



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Drabble Collection, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-07-21
Packaged: 2017-12-14 21:58:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/841830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimtristh/pseuds/kimtristh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don’t remember a time without him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asteripan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asteripan/gifts).



> Taking part in the [30 Day Challenge](http://teddy-grohl.tumblr.com/post/52834856112/lajedsistance-anarchivedblog-using-the), and I'm writing 30 drabbles that all sort of interlink. I will try to keep them once a day although I have actually written a bunch already. 
> 
> I also tried to keep it Tumblr only, but I'm a whore. Hope you like! xx

You don’t remember a time without him. 

“My dear Will,” he says and nothing else needs to exist. Surgically precise fingers threading through your curls, his thick accent coating your entire being. 

He is a port, an anchor, a lighthouse - tasting of home more than your little sanctuary for strays ever did. 

He kisses you, and it’s all broken bones and salt under your tongue. Vague recollections of a life that isn’t fever fading quickly as you dissolve in his hands. 

At times like this, you feel like his creation. At times like this, you wonder if you are.


	2. Accusation

“It’s you!” the words fall from your mouth and you feel them slice your lips so clearly that you’re surprised you’re not bleeding. 

You see him kneeling and only then do you realise you have crumbled to your knees. You’re on the floor before him, and he’s clutching on your shoulders, trying to make you sit up, trying to make you look him in the eye.

“It’s a delusion disguising reality, Will, nothing more” he says, and you know he lies. 

His arms wrap around you, firm grip of his fingers sinking in your hair, and you let him lie.


	3. Restless

You’re alone in your bed and there’s blood on your hands. 

“Don’t,” you beg, and you see him slice her flesh so easily you can feel it. 

It’s the next morning and you’re eating Alana, you’re eating Abigail. 

There once was a time when you thought you knew nightmares, there was a time when you thought it could never get worse.

You’re in his bed and there’s blood on your hands. He licks them clean and you see him like he sees you.

You toss and turn and cry, and he holds you through the terrors. 

It feels like drowning.


	4. Snowflake

They talk about you as if you’re not in the room. 

You’re seven and you should be in class but you’re not and you won’t be for the rest of the week. Your lips are firmly shut, your eyes staring through them.

“Will is just a little different,” they say, and they all nod and pretend to forgive you, and you want to tell them you’re not that different, you want to tell them that you’re not that bad, but you can’t.

You can understand why they say what they say, you can see yourself the way they see you.


	5. Haze

His hands wipe your forehead and he holds your head in place. His thumbs brush your lips; his fingers plant firmly behind your ears. 

He moves around you, in and above you and it’s the same feeling you get from crime scenes. 

You think of you two in another universe, one where you didn’t become him and you smile. You wonder if that Hannibal’s fingers taste the same. 

His lips drop a kiss on the corner of yours and you shiver, his body nestles above yours and you sigh.

As long as you are elsewhere, it’s still worth getting lost.


	6. Flame

The first time you see him, you don’t really see him. You look at his arms, look at his feet, look at his reflection on the window. 

His voice reaches your ears and you can tell right away that he’s hiding something but you listen to him anyway. 

The first time you touch him, you don’t really touch him. He walks towards you and rests his fingers on your shoulder almost kindly. You simply let him. 

His voice pours into your ears with a velvety sickness and you choose to believe he isn’t hiding a thing. 

It feels like burning.


	7. Formal

He buttons and zips you up, his nimble fingers running over fabric, soothing wrinkles that you can barely see. 

You sit in front of the mirror and let him do, because your old garments, much like your old self, are no longer needed and no longer welcome.

Later that day you’ll be talking to people, accepting their compliments, remembering them so you can spill them at his feet when you’re finally alone.

“Perfect, my dear Will,” he says as he puts the comb down, and once again, he tries to build you in his own image.

Once again, he succeeds.


	8. Companion

You were alone and then you found him. 

You remember how it felt. How you dodged the inevitable psychological questions only to be swept away by the soft words of someone you thought you could call friend.

You remember how it was. That someone could look into your head the way you were able to look into everyone else’s. The way you couldn’t look into his, the way you didn’t want to.

He was alone and then he found you. 

He didn’t hunt you, you were a gift. And all along, although you were prey, you felt like a lure.


	9. Move

You remember how it felt to make him cry.

When it happened, you simply held him, his perfectly combed hair becoming ruffled as he sobbed in your arms.

He looked at you that time like he never did again, not when you tried to leave him, not when you tried to kill him. You pretended not to notice.

You wonder what it would have been like if you had never touched the parts of him that he thought were dead. You wonder if he would have loved you anyway, you wonder if he could have been happy.

You would have.


	10. Silver

The first time you see him, he’s silver. Something worthy in Jack’s eyes, something useful for a dozen reasons, something that didn’t truly interest you.

He shone harmless and dull in your eyes. His hair revealing his age much better than his impeccable clothes, his strong posture could.

The first time you love him, he’s gold. Glittering dangerously, calling for your attention, and you can’t help but oblige. 

Now when you see him you don’t see gold, you don’t see silver, you see him as onyx and steel. The way he feels under your fingers, the way he truly is.


	11. Prepared

You are cold and you are barefoot, you are running from him in the dark. 

It’s stupid, really, to think you could get away, to simply run out unprepared like a child would; like you did when you were younger.

He catches you, he always does, his firm grip pulling on your wrist, on your arm. He walks back into the house and you follow him. 

“You shouldn’t do that,” he says, and you listen. You know he’s right.

When he strikes you, it doesn’t come as a surprise. 

What does come as a surprise is that you let him.


	12. Knowledge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LATE! I'm so sorry :) today's also late but tomorrow's will be on at midnight GMT! xx

When it hits you, you have been thinking of him for hours, perhaps days. It is not loud and violent, it’s just suddenly there.

It feels so different from cracking a case, so foreign in its nature although it’s your own brain the one you have been digging for answers. And then it’s him, all him. It’s been him all along.

When the other truth hits you, you’re amazed to realise it’s easier to admit he’s a murderer, than it was to admit that you loved him. 

It is easier because of that at least you can be absolutely sure.


	13. Denial

It is Abigail who tells you. It is Georgia. 

Dozens of times you slip in and out of consciousness and his name is on the tip of your tongue and you blame it on something else. You blame it on your trust; you blame it on your fragility.

You see him in black, dangerous hands exposed to you, perfectly slicked back hair and you tell yourself that what you see is different.

You know who he is, what he is, way before you finally let yourself admit it.

And even as you voice the realisation, you hope it’s only madness.


	14. Wind

You are breathless. 

His hands wrap around your throat and you can almost feel the scars on the tips of his fingers as if they were yours.

The last thing you see is him; he’s also the first thing behind your eyelids. Then it’s over.

As you finish trembling, the cold shudders that leave your skin clammy and sore, you can make out his voice beyond the violent buzzing of your brain as it tries to fight for survival.

“Breathe, my dear Will,” he says, and although it is the very thing you need, you almost want to refuse him.


	15. Order

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so so late! sorry :( so you get three at once :D

When it all began, you didn’t really understand him. You still don’t sometimes.

Things are done a certain way. Always. And for all the coping mechanisms and the hobbies that kept you sane along the years, the meticulousness of your research and your fishing... you’re still amazed at the way he sets the table, the way he folds his shirts.

You can see a million ways to do something and he only sees one. The one way you don’t see. Still, you only do what he wants you to do. 

Still, you hold the knife the way he tells you.


	16. Thanks

His smile reaches his eyes before it reaches his mouth, the hint of a curved lip that is only ever directed at you making you feel almost embarrassed.

“Thank you, my dear Will,” he says as you pass him a napkin, looking at you as he wipes his hands clean. ‘Thank you’ he says as you wipe all surfaces from what isn’t animal blood.

You hold his coat when he needs you to and you hold his hand when he decides you should. 

You praise his kills when he lets you. You kill for him when he wants you to.


	17. Look

He looks at you like you’re something holy. Something valuable and unique. 

You don’t like the way his eyes feel as they travel down your face, down your body.

He didn’t look at you like that before. He always held back the spark of adoration that is now evident in his every action towards you. He treated you like you were normal, that’s why it was easy to trust him; it kills you to know that he never thought of you that way. 

He looks at you like he likes what he sees. You don’t let yourself look at him.


	18. Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long! ;__; work ate me, but I'll be posting loads over the next few days :) xx

You are sweating and huffing, the heat of noon suffocating you. You are back home, with your dogs, with your boats – with him.

He looks immaculate under the sun. His gold and silver hair glistening, his face relaxed in what most people would not recognize as a smile.

You want to ask him, mock him because he can’t be human.

He wipes your forehead with the back of his hand, and you want to kiss his face and hold his hand, but you make do by looking at him in the eye for a second.

You wish it was always like this.


	19. Transformation

It’s the little things, you think. The first thing you notice is that you move differently.

It’s not like when you were in the shoes of a killer, the eye of your mind, your awkward words spilling almost elegantly the brutality of something that wasn’t quite yours. It isn’t seeing yourself moving as something you are not.

You can’t place what it is until he places you in front of him and you can see yourself, responding and anticipating every movement of his.

You are not moving like something you are not, you are moving like what you are now.


	20. Tremble

It comes out in a whimper, and you want to bite your tongue, swallow down the need but instead you beg for more.

You belong to him. The weight above you reminds you that there is no place where you would rather be. And that’s what marks you as his possession, not the scars nor the fact that he catches you when you run. 

“Patience, my dear Will,” he says with a crooked smile that you never see him use elsewhere, and you could hate him - but you don’t. 

Not as long as his hands wrap around your throat again.


	21. Sunset

It’s golden and warm, all the things you are not, all the things you thought he was.

He sits behind you, ruining an excellent suit with mud by sitting on a rock. He says nothing. You hear him breathe and it reminds you of the earlier days, when you barely knew him, when you barely liked him.

“I love you,” you say. You wish you could take it back, put it away in the darkness of your heart where it will never see the sunlight again.

His arms wrap around you, he’s still golden and warm. You wish he wasn’t.


	22. Mad

You can tell when you are being crazy. You tell yourself that over and over. You have even told him as much.

You can tell when something is product of you being crazy, and you can tell when something is not. You look down at your hands and try to understand them; you look down at your feet.

You love him. It’s crazy. You love him. You’re not crazy. He knows you love him, he looks at you like he knows. You love him. 

“I wonder what Chilton would make of this,” you say sarcastically. 

He simply kisses your palm.


	23. Thousand

He bares his teeth for you, his pointed fangs and uneven teeth that he keeps so cleverly hidden. His hair is tousled for you, mussed up by sleep or sex after a long day. He wears cotton t-shirts for you.

You know it’s not common, not average. You know he has probably not shown this to anyone else, not for as long as he has been who he is. “You are one in a thousand, one in a million” his voice rings. 

You always wanted to feel average. You wanted to be just someone. You know he’ll never let you.


	24. Outside

The first time you step foot outside after it all happens, you fall to your knees and he doesn’t help you stand.

It’s so open, and overwhelming; the sky looming infinite above you, the ground extending far beyond the point where you can see.

You had dreamed of that moment. When he would open the door of the cabin where he had kept you locked up for weeks, months even, when you’d get to see a living being that wasn’t him.

“Will you try to run, my dear Will?” he asks, his voice all knowing smugness.

You simply say no.


End file.
